"The public is tired of politicians professing certain beliefs and not acting on those beliefs," said Tom Parker, Moore's former legal adviser, who now is trying to unseat Justice Jean Brown in the Republican primary. "They want elected officials who have the moral courage to do what they will say they will do when they're running for election."

"Judge Moore doesn't have very large coattails," said Larry Powell, a political pollster and professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "He went too far when he refused to obey the court order, and that was sort of a turning point and his popularity has been dropping ever since then."

Carl Grafton, a political science professor at Auburn University Montgomery, is less sure.

"I have to think that the Moore acolytes are better organized" than their opponents, Grafton said. "In the primaries, where the turnout is so low, intensity of feeling and organization often trumps numbers on the other side."